Looking for sparks of gold in daily life
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Friday, April 03, 2009

Remembering Childhood

All the talk about the free-falling American car industry made me want to read Made In Detroit, a childhood memoir by Paul Clemens. It focuses on Detroit, a city that used to symbolize America's once triumphant industry, where dreams were manufactured as they still are in Hollywood, before becoming a wasteland.

The book cover features a picture of the author as a child, playing in a little kid car. This made me wonder what photograph I would choose for a cover if I were to write a memoir of my childhood. Of course, I'd want it to be a picture that reflected my family's nomadic lifestyle, as well as the bliss of childhood - I was one happy little girl!

Maybe a pic of me looking up at Artigas, the hero of Uruguay - the country where my grandparents are from...Or a photograph of a radiant little me in Kenya, where we were then living...Or a snapshot of me as a pompom girl, vacationing in Maine, in a t-shirt from Kenya...Or a photograph of my dear sister and me, in front of Iraq's Samara Tower, a typical destination for our Friday picnics when we were living in Iraq?...Or a pic of me putting on my roller skates in Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the background?

Difficult choice, though I am partial to the one of you on the Rhino, I guess of these it is between the small pinkness of you and Artigas or you and your sister looking quite at home in front of the Samara Tower. OF course it all depends on the tenor of the book....Probably Benjy needs to be on the back cover or inside flap and......

Oh marie-laure...i think it would be absolutey marvelous i you wrote a book about your lie and where you have lived and the experiences you have had...you truly are a citizen of the world...and that is precious!

I love all the pictures, of course! The one with the Samara mosque in the back was our 1984 or 1985 Christmas Greetings ... so far away, and yet, as if it were yesterday ... We had such a good time in Baghdad, didn't we?